


The Rise of Skywalker We Deserved

by jillraney



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Fix-It, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker Fix-It, fuck you disney, just kidding please hire me, what tf is wrong with jj abrams
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-06
Updated: 2020-05-06
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:47:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24042307
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jillraney/pseuds/jillraney
Summary: The flaws in Rise of Skywalker are so fundamental that you’d have to rewrite the whole thing from scratch to repair them. So, I did that. First, what I think went wrong — this movie profoundly misunderstands the protagonists, the villains, and the themes of its own trilogy — and then my crack at the Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker we deserved.
Relationships: Finn & Rey (Star Wars), Finn & Rose Tico, Jannah & Rose Tico, Obi-Wan Kenobi & Anakin Skywalker & Luke Skywalker, Poe Dameron & Finn & Rey, Poe Dameron & Leia Organa, Poe Dameron/Finn, Rey & Rose Tico
Comments: 4
Kudos: 19





	The Rise of Skywalker We Deserved

_Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker_ is a mess and a tragedy. It’s fun to watch in the moment because it slams the nostalgia button faster than a college student pounds cheap vodka, but after a day or two the delight of seeing Lando pilot the Falcon wears off and we’re left hungover and regretful.

 _The Rise of Skywalker_ fails to bring the Skywalker Saga to a satisfying close despite its repeated references to what’s come before, and it all but ignores its narrative responsibility to its own trilogy. The corporations behind this beloved property clearly had no cohesive storytelling throughline driving the production of the sequel trilogy, but both _The Force Awakens_ and _The Last Jedi_ introduce lovable characters and thought-provoking themes that deserve a meaningful conclusion.

 _Rise of Skywalker_ would absolutely have been a better movie if its director hadn’t spent so much screen time clearly thumbing his nose at the last guy — what an Anakin Skywalker move, and not the entertaining _Clone Wars_ kind. But this movie’s problems go so much deeper. A satisfying ending to the Skywalker Saga needs to braid together all the character and thematic threads of _The Force Awakens_ and _The Last Jedi_ with those from the original and prequel trilogies into a resolution that levels up of the galaxy as a whole.

The flaws in _Rise of Skywalker_ are so fundamental that you’d have to rewrite the whole thing from scratch to repair them. So, I did that. First, what I think went wrong — this movie profoundly misunderstands the protagonists, the villains, and the themes of its own trilogy — and then my crack at the _Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker_ we deserved.

## 1: The Trio

The iconography of Star Wars has taught us to expect a trio of protagonists: the Jedi, the Rogue, and the Princess. This is a very surface-level way of looking at the OT and PT protagonists, whose stories certainly go deeper than this packaging, but the archetypal influence is all over the genre fiction of the ensuing decades. I remember seeing a pattern of the Nice Guy, the Bad Boy, and the Girl all over the media of my childhood — even characters that predated Star Wars, like Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman, were marketed to me using the Star Wars template. Buffy, Willow, and Xander and Harry, Hermione, and Ron iterate on the template with the Chosen One, the Smart One, and the Dumbass with a Heart of Gold — arguably even Captain America, Iron Man, and Thor fit this mold pretty neatly as well.

So much of the marketing for the launch of this new trilogy went into getting us excited about our new trio: Rey, Finn, and Poe. And excited we got! _The Force Awakens_ introduces us to three absurdly charming young protagonists who develop instant chemistry with each other and our old friends Han and Leia. _The Last Jedi_ separated our protagonists from each other for most of the movie but gave each of them meaningful emotional moments and character growth. (I liked seeing Finn get some class consciousness in Canto Bight, but if you didn’t, that’s cool, just go rewatch the determination in Finn’s eyes in the battle on Crait.) But then _The Rise of Skywalker_ went and completely ignored two of our three protagonists, flattening them down from exceptionally watchable lead characters into props in someone else’s story.

The sequel trilogy changed up the Jedi, the Rogue, and the Princess format by making its Jedi a girl, and traditionally there’s only one girl in these movies so there couldn’t possibly be a princess in this one right? I’m exceedingly grateful that Rey is never forced into the male gaze-y costumes and film language that young Leia and Padme had to contend with. But there’s a different kind of misogyny at play in not being honest about what role the Princess plays in this three-protagonist format.

Poe has all the visual and characterization signifiers of Han’s role as the Rogue: cocky pilot who has some things to learn but has the talent and heart to back up his smart mouth. But Han’s character arc from _A New Hope_ goes to Finn: guy who’s only out to save his own skin makes friends and decides to fight for the people he cares about. Finn spends _The Force Awakens_ growing into someone who will fight not just for himself but for the people he loves, and it takes him until the end of _The Last Jedi_ to fight not just for the people he loves but for a cause much bigger than any of them. Meanwhile we never see Poe interact with Han but _The Last Jedi_ makes clear that Leia sees him as her protege.

The non-decorative role of the Princess is political leader. Leia and her mother before her were powerful and talented politicians who drove the story forward with and without the use of blasters. General Organa has now lived long enough to lead a rebellion to victory, form a new democratic government, see that new government blown out of the sky, and foment a new rebellion with her fingers crossed tight that this one’s victory lasts longer. We see in _The Last Jedi_ how heavily the consequences of all that responsibility weigh on Leia, and how difficult her lessons are for Poe, but those emotional moments are the closest this trilogy gets to addressing galactic politics, and that’s more of a problem than it seems at first glance. We’ll come back to that.

I wouldn’t be mad at Star Wars for making a deliberate choice to move beyond the trio format. I’m mad as hell at the ST for both ignoring the value of the Princess as political leader in the previous trilogies and abjectly failing to give meaningful final acts to two thirds of a trio that it invested a lot of time and money getting us to fall in love with. It’s ironic that this misogynist understanding of the trio template results in sidelining two characters who are men, but it’s very telling that these two characters are men of color.

Screen time and care that Finn and Poe deserve instead gets misplaced in a vision of Kylo Ren as Rey’s other half that is wildly racist and sexist. I don’t think that was the filmmakers’ intent but wow was it ever the outcome.

My expertise isn’t in film: my expertise is in whose humanity we take seriously and whose we don’t, how our culture teaches us whose humanity matters, and how difficult it is for us to unlearn horrifically toxic attitudes about who really counts as a person and learn new attitudes to replace them and new skills to back them up. Rian Johnson surprised me with his layered critique of whiteness in _Knives Out_ and he gave us so much to chew on in _Last Jedi_ ’s conflict between Poe and Admiral Holdo, but he said in _Last Jedi_ ’s commentary track that he sees Kylo and Rey as dual protagonists. YIKES. Whose humanity does and does not matter on screen in popular media is an enormously influential way we learn toxic attitudes that can take lifetimes to unlearn.

## 2: The Villains

Every installment in the Skywalker Saga has two villains: a master and an apprentice. The OT needed a purely evil villain as part of the rock-solid conventional storytelling foundation on top of which it told a bizarre story that blew its 1977 audience’s minds. The PT told that pure-evil villain’s origin story and landed us with one of our trio of protagonists becoming his apprentice, mirroring the apprentice killing the master in the climactic OT finale. But then the ST apprentice went and killed his master one whole movie earlier than in the OT, so what happens now?

Instead of panicking and resurrecting Palpatine, _The Rise of Skywalker_ could’ve been the first Star Wars movie to go beyond the trope of the 100% evil mastermind villain and examine the villains as complex people with fears and motivations and maybe a point of view.

I think the ST misunderstands its villains because it underestimates its audience.

Each Star Wars trilogy has been released into a radically different media landscape than the one before it. The original _Star Wars_ revolutionized mainstream acceptance of genre fiction so profoundly that looking back from the other side it’s hard to even wrap our heads around how unprepared audiences were for this bizarre space opera. Without the OT we probably wouldn’t have gotten _Blade Runner_ or _Close Encounters_ or _ET_ or so many of the iconic sci fi movies that changed mainstream tastes over the course of the ’80s. Then on our TVs between the OT and PT, _The X Files_ and _Buffy the Vampire Slayer_ and _Star Trek: The Next Generation_ were significantly expanding the level of mythology a mainstream entertainment franchise could expect audiences to follow. The PT came out concurrently with the _Lord of the Rings_ and _Matrix_ movies and the Harry Potter books, and stretching from the PT to ST we got the _Harry Potter_ movies, Nolan’s _Batman_ trilogy, and the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The ST came along at a time when nearly every theatrical release is part of a franchise, _Game of Thrones_ is prestige TV, even the CW has a complex and popular genre franchise in the Arrowverse. Today’s mainstream moviegoing audience has seen _a lot_ of this stuff and we’re prepared for the kind of complexity that _Rise of Skywalker_ gracelessly moonwalked away from by resurrecting Palpatine.

One of the few things I found delightful when _The Rise of Skywalker_ was unfolding in front of me and that I still delight in months later is that Hux is revealed to be a petty chump who dies pathetic and inconsequential. Hux is even more fun to hate than Grand Moff Tarkin and he gets more characterization — he’s terrifying in his speech on Starkiller Base and hilariously unable to protect himself from Poe’s trolling. The first two installments of the ST plant the seeds of an interesting rivalry between Supreme Leader in waiting Kylo Ren and commander of kidnapped stormtroopers General Hux. Why resurrect Palpatine when you already have an entertaining second villain for the Sith Lord to collaborate with and play against?

We as the viewers are used to the format of the master and apprentice. You know who else is used to this format? Kylo and Hux. They started the ST on the verge of taking over the galaxy, to the extent that when Rey finally tracks down Luke Skywalker she tells him they’re in a race against time: the First Order will control all the major star systems within weeks. But by the end of _The Last Jedi_ , not only have they lost Starkiller Base and most of the stormtroopers garrisoned there, but their Supreme Leader is dead and his enormous ship with all its generals and stormtroopers has been destroyed, and we’re all kidding ourselves if we think they’re just gonna build a New Bigger Death Star or something real quick to justify the level of power over the galaxy they’re credited with in the _Rise of Skywalker_ title crawl.

It’s a much more meaningful continuation of the story thus far, and a much more interesting arc to explore given the decades of space villainy stories this audience now has under our belts, that the First Order are space Nazis at their most terrifyingly desperate and most desperately laughable.

## 3: The Themes

Now a Star Wars movie laughing at space Nazis sounds like the kind of thing the internet might have “Space Wizards Ruined by SJW Politics” opinions about. But news flash, nerf herders: Star Wars is about wars, which in turn are about politics. The original movie was a direct response to the Vietnam war, and in every era the Star Wars franchise has been an exploration of the human costs of war just as much as it has always been iterations of a coming of age hero’s journey story.

The prequels’ political elements are awkward to watch because the dialogue is bad. But the whole point of those three movies is to show us how the villains of the OT became galaxy-controlling terrors, and that story is fundamentally a political one. The most important moment in the entire PT is that spine-tingling click and hiss when Anakin Skywalker’s face disappears under the mask of Darth Vader. The second-most important, the “this was too real when George W Bush was president but now holy shit” moment, is “so this is how liberty dies, with thunderous applause.”

Star Wars has always been in conversation with its specific time in US politics. The OT responded to and to a certain extent predicted the Republican demagoguery of the Nixon and Reagan administrations. The PT literally had Anakin quote George W Bush to show he was turning to the dark side. The ST began late in the Obama era, a time when the most progressive president we’ve ever had was still responsible for mass deportations and extralegal drone strikes, and then found itself in the Trump era, where it had already established the villains as ascendant fascists with no ideology beyond I Want To Rule Because I Want To and whose greatest power is in most everyday people assuming there’s nothing to be done to stop them.

With that context, let’s return to the lack of a Princess/politician among our trio, and let’s also return to Finn. His arc for much of this trilogy mirrors Han’s from _A New Hope_ , but if _The Rise of Skywalker_ were to be a true conclusion to the Skywalker Saga, Finn’s ultimate arc would be an answer to Anakin’s.

A child slave, separated from his family very young, raised to be a warrior in a secretive cult that demanded total obedience and emotional self-negation? That’s the tragedy of Anakin Skywalker, and we get a stunning mirror in Finn. Anakin’s fall is a result of his own choices, but it’s also a predictable outcome of both Palpatine’s manipulation and the Jedi Council’s dehumanizing ideology.

Which brings me to the linchpin political question of this trilogy: what are our protagonists doing differently this time so that in 20 years Poe, Rey, and Finn don’t find themselves in the exact same positions Leia, Luke, and Han are in now?

In the OT we’re supposed to accept that the Jedi are the good guys and not particularly think about it. For all their clunky writing and directing, the PT still manages to paint a somewhat nuanced picture of the Jedi as generally good but way more powerful than they should be — and yet, for all their power, they’re still woefully ill equipped to meet the challenges of their time. Forget trade policy, that’s the political throughline of the prequels.

 _The Last Jedi_ doesn’t give us details about how Luke went about teaching Ben Solo and the rest of the new generation of trainee Jedi, but there’s a lot we can infer from Luke’s reaction to his padawan turning to the dark side. Luke does exactly what Obi Wan did: tried to train an exceptionally powerful young Force user despite not having any experience or special skills as a teacher, it went badly, he ran away to a far-flung planet to hide in his shame and grow a scraggly beard and die. If Luke had evolved his thinking about the role of basic human emotions in the life of a Jedi, he might have, I don’t know, talked to his sister about it instead of running away.

“From my point of view the Jedi are evil” is a hilarious line that Hayden Christensen sold as best he could, bless him. But seriously though, from my point of view, the Jedi have an undeniable flaw that is at the heart of the Skywalker family tragedy and any satisfying end to this saga needs to address it.

Humans and all mammals are social creatures. We need emotional connections in order to function. Babies who don’t get enough cuddles and emotional interaction with their caregivers face substantial life-long developmental problems. It’s a baldly absurd recipe for disaster to expect the most powerful beings in the galaxy to just not experience social attachments.

The Force is balance. It’s light and dark and birth and death and hope and fear and every binary you can think of. By the Jedi’s own logic, for powerful light to exist there must also exist powerful dark. So why do they think cutting themselves off from their own emotions and exclusively using a narrow subset of the light side of the Force won’t always cause an imbalance that assholes like the Sith will always show up to murderously bring into balance?

One particular binary of the Force that gets explored in character arcs across the saga and deserves its turn for overt discussion is selfishness vs selflessness. Sith Lords let their most selfish desires guide them no matter what that costs others. The Jedi Order expects of its members total obedience and self-negation. Neither is healthy, neither is a realistic expectation to set for children, and it’s time for this binary to end.

Hot take: it’s ok to do things simply because you want to, just for yourself, as long as you don’t hurt anybody else in the process. It’s among the most fundamental of human experiences to fear the loss of your closest people and to grieve them when death inevitably takes them. It’s healthy and good and at the heart of thousands of years of storytelling to want to enjoy the time you have on this earth with the people you love, and it’s no different in a galaxy far, far away. Be a little selfish. Love and be loved. Just don’t try to force someone you love to love you back, and don’t try to stop the people you love from dying. (Don’t Force-choke your wife after betraying the political ideals she devoted her life to, Anakin, that really tipped your cards that you care more about feeling in control than your wife’s well-being.)

Anakin was meant to destroy the Sith, not join them. But to truly bring balance to the Force, the Jedi have to evolve beyond anything Luke or Obi Wan or even Yoda could imagine. Luke will not be the last Jedi, Rey will. Finn will be the first of a new order of Force users who understand that the Jedi expectation of total obedience is hardly better than the First Order’s brainwashing.

Rey and Finn will train the next generation to honor the balance in the Force by accepting all their feelings, including their love and fear and anger, and making choices with two guideposts: to increase justice in the galaxy, absolutely, but also just pure selfish but harmless joy.

And with that, my take on the _Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker_ we deserved.

# Star Wars: Episode IX  
The Rise of Skywalker

_The galaxy is in chaos. The First Order is on the march to strike fear into every star system, but without a planet-killing weapon or a visionary leader they are nowhere near establishing an imperial government to replace the New Republic they destroyed._

_Petty despots are taking advantage of the upheaval. Across the galaxy, people are starving and children are going missing._

_General Leia Organa has negotiated shelter for her decimated Resistance on Sullust alongside the refugees of her long-ago destroyed home planet. Desperate to build new support, our brave heroes are traveling to nearby planets to convince political leaders and everyday people to join them…_

## Act I

Every Star Wars movie opens with the transition from the opening crawl to a starry expanse to a starship or a planet coming into view. This time we see two small transport ships approaching a very green planet we’ve seen before, long ago — Naboo.

One ship lands first and scans the greenery around a beautiful but weathered building, perhaps a palace in some disrepair. “The coast is clear, General,” says Poe Dameron over the comms.

The other ship touches down in front of the old, grand building. We see from a distance as Leia Organa and a small crew of Resistance fighters exit the ship and walk up to an older woman in long, flowing robes who shows them inside.

Rose Tico is finishing up camouflaging the transport with ivy vines and straw when there’s a rustling nearby. A flock of birds stop their calls and then suddenly all fly away.

Rey pushes aside an overgrown tree branch with her staff. Finn and two other Resistance fighters follow her. Poe turns from overseeing the valley below to smile at his friends, relieved.

Our heroes make their way through a field of tall grasses and ivy and rubble of sandstone bricks to arrive at the outskirts of an industrial food plant. Colorful vegetable fields spread out into the distance and a pair of stormtroopers in full gear rustle a herd of cattle into a large building with heavily puffing smokestacks.

Poe directs Rey and Finn to go one direction and the rest of the group to follow him. Our heroes sneak around stormtroopers, place explosives, unlock cattle gates. BB8 gets to work at a data port and we see a mile-wide assembly line grind to a halt.

Our heroes are sneaking back out the way they entered when Rey senses a presence behind the group. She slows her pace to put some distance between her friends and the stranger.

The stormtrooper following them stops, holds up her hands to show she’s unarmed, and carefully goes to lift her helmet. We see the stormtrooper’s face. She says, “My name is Jannah. Are you with the Resistance? My people and I are here for the same reason as you.”

Poe instinctively throws out an arm to stop him, but Finn runs up to the stranger — Jannah. “Are you a stormtrooper?” he demands.

Jannah recognizes Finn. Starstruck isn’t quite the right word, but we can see all over her face that this is a big deal, and not in the way that Finn lied about once upon a time. “I was. TZ-1719. Are you FN-2187? Finn?”

Finn takes her hand. We see Poe and Rose exchange a worried glance.

We cut to a spartan, white-paneled room. Kylo Ren paces back and forth, every so often passing by a pillar holding up the half-melted helmet of his grandfather.

“Rey,” he says through the Force. “Rey!” he shouts. She doesn’t answer.

Kylo punches the wall, then sits down, head in his hands. “Hear me — mom?”

We see Leia look off to the distance, distracted from her meeting from the young Queen of Naboo and her advisers. She doesn’t speak but her face tells us everything. She’s asking her son to come home.

We see Ren rushing to his ship. “Where are you going?” demands Hux. “I’ve felt a disturbance in the force,” Ren says.

Our heroes and their new friend Jannah are cutting their way back through the tall grasses. “This rations plant feeds all the stormtrooper garrisons in this quadrant, and we’re here to recruit who we can and shut down the rest,” Jannah explains.

Finn hasn’t stopped looking gobsmacked since Jannah took off her helmet. “How many are you?”

We hear Jannah in voiceover as we see the rest of her team talking to stormtroopers in the rations plant, disrupting operations, making their way back to their ship with several new recruits.

“About two dozen from my unit deserted when we heard that the Supreme Leader and Captain Phasma were dead. One of my bunkmates was friends with a stormtrooper who managed to escape Starkiller Base, and he and a few others had set up a refuge on Carida.”

We see the rations plant explode, then the explosive look on Admiral Hux’s face as he and the bridge officers on his First Order ship realize what’s happening. Hux shouts wordlessly and we see his ship jump to hyperspace.

Jannah continues: “There are maybe a hundred of us, more now, I hope. The First Order isn’t as good at brainwashing as they think they are — you taught us that.”

Finn is clearly moved that his decision meant so much — but all of a sudden he falters, nearly falling to the ground. Rey looks devastated.

We see Hux’s ship land on Naboo and bring its full firepower to bear on the old building where Leia is meeting with the planet’s queen. The building explodes, its beautiful green dome shattering into pieces across the sky.

## Act II

There’s not a dry eye in the house as the audience grieves Carrie Fisher just as our heroes grieve Leia.

Rey’s face clouds over with rage and she runs at full tilt to confront the bastards who killed her beloved general. We cut to Kylo Ren, who, eerily, has the exact same reaction. He changes his ship’s course.

Kylo lands on Naboo and faces off against Hux, lightsaber drawn. Rey arrives moments later, panting, and shouts at Kylo, “How could you!” In her rage she fails to notice that the phalanx of stormtroopers are braced for battle against him, not to back him up.

Hux directs his stormtroopers at Rey. She shouts a battle cry and runs at them, and suddenly there’s a loud crash. Her staff is channeling force lightning. She kills dozens of stormtroopers in one blast.

By now Finn, Poe, Jannah, Rose, and the rest have arrived just in time to watch Rey murder stormtroopers who we’ve just learned are capable of shaking off their programming. Finn mirrors what Rey just said to Kylo when he shouts, “How could you!” He looks devastated all over again, and Jannah is horrified. Poe is horrified, Rose is horrified, everyone is horrified.

Kylo Ren offers Rey his hand and says, “Come with me.” She’s so devastated by what she’s just done that she takes his hand and follows him.

Poe signals his troops to retreat. They’re woefully outmatched and they need to get out of there, and he asks Jannah to come with them — she agrees. Poe and Finn share a heavy, determined look and squeeze each other’s hands before Finn runs off in another direction.

Hux and his remaining stormtroopers march on Naboo’s capitol. You can see in the gleam in Hux’s eye that he’s checking a planet off the list in his Evil Plan spreadsheet of death.

Rey and Kylo have found a hidden-away place to talk. They grieve Leia. Kylo tells Rey that the only other Force user to have ever commanded force lighting was Emperor Palpatine — she must be his granddaughter. He’s lying, but Rey believes him, and audience members who don’t remember Count Dookoo might believe him as well. Kylo says he’s not afraid of her, he’s the only person who will ever feel safe around her, she should join him. He was on his way to bring his mother to his side when Hux killed her! Leia could have been a Sith queen but she denied her power in the Force in order to marry his father, what a waste Kylo thinks this was despite it resulting in his existence.

The idea that Kylo thought Leia would join him and install new fascism in the galaxy is a bridge too far for Rey, and she yanks her hand from his and runs.

We see that Finn had followed her and overheard her conversation with Kylo. He stows away on the ship Rey steals to leave the planet.

Cut to the Resistance hideout where Poe is eulogizing Leia. He shares a story of growing up among veterans of the Rebellion and how patient and kind Leia always was with him — with all the children around her, especially her own son. Poe talks about Leia’s skill as a diplomat and a strategist and a mentor. She was teaching him how much harder it is to build leadership that will last in peacetime than it is to hop in an X Wing and blow stuff up.

After the formal speech, we see the newly minted General Dameron sitting alone, the weight of his new responsibilities heavy atop his grief. BB8 beeps from the doorway and he looks up to wave in his droid and Rose, Jannah, and Chewie. Rose says she and Jannah have been talking about how to get more stormtroopers to switch sides. “The First Order is terrifying, sure, but they aren’t as scary as they want us to think. There’s no way they can find the raw materials or the labor to build a new Death Star-level weapon anytime soon. Their only real weapon is fear. And that fear is going to be hard for them to hold onto when stormtroopers start abandoning every single one of their outposts.”

Poe is nodding along. He says to Rose, “Maybe you should be general.” She shakes her head and tells him, “We all have a role to play. I’d rather spend my time sabotaging First Order munitions plants.” It’s all over her face that she plans to enjoy that.

Poe says. “So what’s going to get that many stormtroopers to walk away?”

Jannah explains that some of the former stormtroopers she’s in contact with have seen records the First Order keeps on what planets they were stolen from as children. Some of the records even include names and birthdates. “Some of us might even be able to track down our families,” she says.

Chewie roars at that. “Wow,” Poe says. “Whatever you need, let’s make that happen.”

Rose says, “We have to make the case to as many people on as many worlds as possible that we’re not fighting what we hate, we’re fighting for what we love. That’s what Leia died doing, and that’s what we’re going to redouble our efforts to do until we win.”

Jannah points out, “Soldiers take orders, but civilians don’t. It’s not enough to win a war if what follows the war is just chaotic misery for those who manage to survive. How are we going to stop a new First Order from rising from this one’s ashes?”

There’s a heavy silence as we all sit with that question. This is the kind of thing they would’ve asked Leia, but the last time around, Leia was in their shoes and not only did she not stop the First Order from rising — she gave birth to its Supreme Leader. Fuck. What are we supposed to do?

We cut to Rey sitting amid the ashes of the Jedi tree on Ach To. She shouts to the sky, “What am I supposed to do?” As Finn approaches her from one side of the screen, we see a glimmer off to the other side that resolves into three figures.

We see the Force ghosts of Luke Skywalker, Anakin Skywalker, and Obi Wan Kenobi.

“Rey!” Finn shouts. He’s drawn his blaster against the unknown figures.

Luke chuckles and says, “You must be Finn. Come, sit. We have a lot to talk about.”

We cut past the introductions to the meat of the conversation. Anakin says, “My grandson was lying to you, only a few who are very strong with the Force can summon Force lightning but it was never Palpatine’s alone, and besides he never had children as far as I know. Though, to be fair, someone did manage to conceal my own children from me for a time.”

Obi Wan breaks in, “But the point is, you are not lost, Rey. How you choose to use the Force is still up to you.”

“And you ought not be worried for who you are,” says Luke. “My aunt and uncle spoke often of another girl who grew up a nobody on a desert planet. I was wrong not to tell you about her earlier. She was alone, a slave, unimportant, but she gave me the name Skywalker, and from every story I’ve ever heard she was just as kind as she was brave, just like you.”

Anakin looks unspeakably proud.

We cut to a First Order base where Kylo Ren is throttling one of his officers. “What do you mean the Hutts wouldn’t agree to our terms?” he shouts.

“They think you’re weak,” says Hux. “They don’t think you’re Supreme Leader material.”

“Sir,” says another officer, clearly afraid for his life. “I’m sorry, sir, we just got word that over one hundred stormtroopers abandoned their post all at once.”

“Where?” shouts Kylo.

“Coruscant, sir.”

Kylo throws the holo thingy the officer tries to hand him. “Hux, come with me. I have an idea for how to replace your useless stormtroopers.”

“But I thought,” Rey says, as we cut back to Ach To, “that the Force is only for monks. Those who swear off all attachments — that’s what the Jedi texts say.”

Finn says, “I mean no disrespect, but that’s even less of a life than what the First Order let me have as a stormtrooper. Is that what you taught Kylo Ren?”

Luke looks ashamed.

“What would happen,” Rey asks, “if I noticed the Force, let it flow through me, but I didn’t cut myself off from it if I felt scared or angry or confused? Not to take my anger out on others, just if I felt it — what would happen?”

Luke and Anakin both look to Obi Wan. “I don’t know,” he says.

“And what would happen,” Finn asks, “if someone I love was in danger and I used the Force to protect that person?”

Luke and Anakin both look curiously between Finn and Rey, but Rey just rolls her eyes.

“Master Obi Wan,” she says. “I’ve been alone for such a long time. I don’t want to rewrite the rules of life and death, I just want a place in the world, with people who love me. And I don’t want to kill Kylo Ren, I don’t want to kill anyone, but I will do everything I can to stop the First Order from making stormtroopers of us all. How could that be so wrong?”

“Your heart serves you well, Rey,” says Obi Wan. “Yours too, Finn. I don’t know what will happen now, but I do know what happened when I trained a young man to be a Jedi when I thought myself wise just for listening without question to those who’d come before me. Maybe the two of you have something to teach us all.”

We cut back to Poe, who with R2D2’s help is making a call on an old frequency. “Admiral, I believe you flew with my mother,” he says. And we see the face of Lando Calrissian.

## Act III

Rey and Finn’s ship lands on Sullust and we see at a distance as they rejoin their Resistance compatriots. Rey and Finn each hug Poe in turn.

We cut to a war room meeting where The Plan to counteract the First Order’s fear machine comes into focus. Jannah and her network are going to convince untold numbers of stormtroopers to defect and she’s going to find and broadcast the kidnapping records. Rey and Finn are going to reach out to all the force-sensitives on every planet and encourage them to step into their senses, not necessarily to help them fight, just to feel the connections between each other and every living thing. Rose is going to take the droids on a sabotage mission unlike the galaxy has ever seen.

Finn hugs Rey tight, then he turns to Rose and she cups his cheek and gives him a supportive smile. Poe has gone off to the side of the room — he looks overwhelmed, and unsure of where he stands with Finn. Rey takes Rose’s hand and we zoom in on Finn.

Finn looks significantly at Poe. Poe starts to say something — then Finn hauls in and kisses him. We get a beat to take it all in. And then Poe says, “you know what this means?” Finn looks at him heavily. Poe finishes his thought: “we have to go back to Jakku.”

And we’re off to the montage! We see Rey, Rose, and Jannah travel to Coruscant, shabbier than we’ve last seen it, to start to put the plan in motion. Finn and Poe do the same on Jakku, and Lando, Maz, and Chewie do the same on Corellia.

“STOP THEM!” we hear Supreme Leader Kylo Ren shout. We cut to a hodgepodge group of mercenaries being inducted into their own special battalion alongside the Knights of Ren and stormtroopers with officer’s pauldrons. Kylo Ren is giving a speech to his First Order legion: “The only worthwhile life is an extraordinary life” and “we will drag the galaxy kicking and screaming into a thousand years of our extraordinary reign” and some shit.

We cut back to Naboo, where one of the stormtroopers who we saw push away Jannah’s friends in Act I is now calling: she’s changed her mind, and she wants Jannah to know that the First Order is gearing up for something big. She’s learned from another stormtrooper that Supreme Leader Ren and Admiral Hux are planning to kidnap every toddler on Tatooine to punish the Hutts for their defiance.

Jannah and Rey share a significant look. “R2,” says Rey, “tell the others to meet us on Tatooine.”

For the first time in a trilogy we return to the iconic desert planet. Buckle in, because a lot is about to happen.

— Finn, Rose, Jannah, Chewie, Maz, Lando and the rest lead a battle of stormtroopers vs stormtroopers with First Order mercenaries and many civilian residents of Tatooine adding to the chaos. Stormtroopers steal children, children bite and kick and run away from stormtroopers, Rose shows a cantina bartender how to MacGyver a flame thrower, and meanwhile Rey and Poe go after Kylo.

— The Big Climactic Fight is Kylo and his Knights of Ren vs Rey and Poe, all on speeders, alluding to both the trench run and the pod race but more importantly allowing for them to look each other in the eyes and trash talk — Poe very viciously points out that of the two of them, him and Kylo, Leia was proud of only one.

— Rey and Poe both call on the Knights of Ren to take off their masks and walk away from all this, and they both call on Kylo to give up his bullshit, constantly murdering people just to maintain your power is no way to live — and _one of the knights takes off his mask_ but Kylo immediately murders him. Rey Force-lightnings Kylo away from the turncoat knight, who Poe goes to tend to (by this point several of the other knights are already dead so Poe can afford to make himself vulnerable) as Rey advances on Kylo. She tells him she doesn’t want to kill him but she will if that’s the only thing that will stop him. He says she can try. And then Rey goes in for the kill and fucking obliterates him.

— Hux is watching all of this from the bridge of his ship above Tatooine where the transports of kidnapped children are heading — our heroes are mostly succeeding at freeing the children before the transports take off, but we also see stormtroopers switching sides from transports in flight.

— Jannah and Chewie commandeer a transport to get onto Hux’s ship, where they locate the data on all the kidnapped stormtroopers to date and broadcast it across the galaxy. Three stormtroopers march into Hux’s office pretending to protect him, “sir, the rebels are on the ship, we must get you to safety,” and it turns out they’re siblings from Dantooine and they throw him out the damn airlock, bye asshole.

— And we won! Everything is still a little bit chaos but it’s going to be ok. Poe is injured but not too badly, Rey is exhausted, Finn is elated as he brings a pair of twins back to their father, Jannah is on her way back to the planet on the Millennium Falcon piloted by Lando and Chewie because we can have a little fanservice as a treat! Rose turns around to find a stormtrooper running towards her — he’s shouting, “You’re the Resistance general from Hays Minor! I think I’m your cousin!” Our trio hug each other tight, and then Finn and Poe kiss in a shot Disney can’t cut ~for the international market~. Fireworks light up the Tatooine double-sunset sky.

## Coda

Jannah and some of her stormtrooper pals go back to Naboo where they meet with the human and Gungan leaders and establish a village for former stormtroopers who want a peaceful retirement.

Poe brings Finn to the Dameron family compound. Finn says he likes the first name Poe gave him so much that he’s wondering if he’d give him a last name too.

And finally we come to the end of this movie, this trilogy, and the Skywalker Saga: Rey leads a class of Force-sensitives. She says, “the Force is all around us, it is light and dark and everything in between, our hopes and fears and the cycle of life and death and life anew. The Force belongs to none of us and all of us. Those of us who choose to harness the Force celebrate our emotional attachments but we don’t let our selfish impulses rule us. The Jedi have evolved. Now we are Skywalkers.”

And the last thing we see is Finn assembling his very own yellow lightsaber.

**Author's Note:**

> Did you catch the reference to [the greatest Star Wars fanwork of all time](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5457191)?
> 
> Also available on Medium <https://medium.com/@jr3wx/the-rise-of-skywalker-we-deserved-24325cd90cf1> for additional sharing!


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